The Ultimate Interactive Content Beginner’s Guide

Like many marketers you’re probably wondering whether you picked the wrong content creator or amplified and promoted the content enough.

That may be true.

But did you ever consider that the problem isn’t your content?

Yes you heard me correctly. May be it isn’t your lovingly crafted content or your proven amplification and distribution process.

Did you just stop in your tracks like a cartoon Road Runner?

The problem is your audience.

I’ll let that sink in.

Regardless of whom you’re targeting and what you’re offering, your audience consists of real people. No matter how they use them, they’ve only got 24 hours in a day.

As a result,your content is competing for seconds of theirlimited time and attention. Even worse, like you, every other marketer is trying every possible trick to nudge them to act.

Of course, you can’t tell your boss your potential customers are lazy sniveling slugs who don’t give a damn about your award-worthy content. We both know how that argument will wind up and it’s not pretty!

Why?

Because the customer is always right. (This isn’t a new idea.)

Starting to feel depressed that no matter how good your content is, it’ll never get the full attention it deserves.

What if I told you that there was another way to present your content that would pull your prospects in and get them to engage?

Sound appealing?

You can transform your static, unloved content into interactive content. Then it’ll tap into the full power of tailored digital experiences to yield measurable business results.

Interactive Content Basics

Why Content Marketers Need Interactive Content Now

1. High quality content avalanche

While the bar for useful information that meets audience needs keeps going up, marketers no longer compete with just their head-to-head competitors and massive leaders (including Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon). They also compete with everything demanding their audience’s attention including family and friends, their job and personal time.

2. Lack of actionable content metrics

Dazzled by vanity metrics and easy-to-track results, marketers are limited in their ability to offer truly targeted, personalized content based on small data. Marketers need the power of intelligent content combined with AI tools to deliver a personalized customer experience.

Worse, many marketers overestimate their ability to measure the right elements of their content marketing. (Note: CMI/MarketingProfs Research reveals a lower difference between best-in-class and worst-in-class content marketers for tracking metrics than other strategic elements. So, they’re not tracking the right metrics.)

3. Weak post-content consumption followup

In part, this is attributable to the Marketing and Sales disconnect that exists in many corporations. Yes Marcus Sheridan makes compelling arguments for making your departments work together but that’s not enough to tear down this deep departmental divide. It’s often exacerbated by conflicting goals.

Even with the best intentions, many companies fail to create effective (read: profitable revenues) follow-through. One-size-fits-all answers fail to convert most initial respondents. This means you need tailored response based on reader interaction.

This isn’t new. Direct marketers have known this for years.

Interactive content defined

Interactive content is a browser-based digital experience that entices prospects to engage with your information. Interactive content is grounded in traditional direct marketing that broke through the promotional clutter to persuade recipients to do something.

Early direct marketing examples of offline interactive content include contests, stickers and checklists. The objective was to get recipients to act—even if it was only to apply a “Yes” sticker to a response card.

Interactive content yields customizable customer experiences. They can be integrated into freshly created content or embedded into repurposed existing content.

First interactive content example

To put this in perspective, video content and advertising, while easy-to-create for major advertisers, didn’t gain traction until 2004 to 2006 because bandwidth was limited and expensive for both businesses and users.

Initially video was considered interactivecompared to other content formats since viewers spent time adjusting the controls such as sound and replay. The main actor in early videos pointed to the call-to-action button adjacent to the video player.

The first interactive content hit was Live Vault’s Back Up Trauma Video staring John Cleese promoting the company’s system backup solutions. The video garnered 150,000+ downloads and 200+ links in the first month. This was a record-breaking number of downloads at the time.

This content was interactive because Cleese steps out of character at the end to directly address the viewer. He instructs him to answer a question by clicking one of two buttons. The viewer sees tailored video based on his answer.

Understanding your audience is key to successful interactive content response. While systems backups may be a dull topic, systems administrators (and other computer nerds) love John Cleese and his brand of humor. This content went viral! (BTW–Here’s how to make your content viral by design!)

How To Make the Interactive content case: The Data

Make the case to your boss for adding interactive content to your content marketing strategy, use this data from Content Marketing Institute and Demand Metrics.

2. Provides more granular, actionable data

User actions leave footprints that translate to useful information. Based on this feedback, marketers can offer more tailored content prospects actively seek.

Further, this follow up content doesn’t involve time delays that many calls-to-action do while user input is checked. As a result, businesses appear more responsive to prospect needs.

This data enables marketers to provide richer, relevant information that helps prospects and purchase influencers to make their decision. In the process, marketers build credibility and trust for their business.

3. Supports independent prospect learning

Armed with relevant post-interactive content engagement, prospects can continue to gather the information they need to purchase from your business.

Done well, this content taps into companywide expertise that prospects trust such as explanations from technical experts and how-to content.

Further, this post-interaction content makes your business appear responsive in real time until qualified sales people can enter the process to close the deal.

Why Interactive Content May Fail To Yield Optimal Results

While interactive content can improve content marketing conversion rates and provide more tailored content that prospects expect, interactive content isn’t a plug-and-play asset that works miracles on a weak content marketing strategy.

1. Lack of quality interactive content knowledge

Interactive content is a relatively new form of content marketing. As a result, there’s limited information, case studies and training.

Early-to-market suppliers created most existing materials so they feel like advertorials. This diminishes their authority and effectiveness.

Marketers must understand the full implications of using interactive content across different media types (owned, social and paid) without feeling they’re being sold to.

Just inserting a piece of interactive content into a few pieces of existing content or social media like it’s a piece of expensive jewelry won’t cut it. By itself, this approach will fail to improve bottom line results.

Buttons and forms. Are good calls-to-action whose goal is to accomplish a specific act leading towards conversion. The delivered content isn’t tailored.

Embedded social shares. Add a visual component to your text for visual learners.

Hyperlinks. Are subtle calls-to-action to reference additional content or sources. They aid scanning in an article’s Table of Contents or extend time-on-site with Recommended Reading.

Chat. Is useful to answer prospect questions in a timely manner. This functionality is external to your content.

Interactive Content Basics Conclusion

Learn the interactive content basics to have a secret weapon to combat content shock and other attention-grabbing objects.

Start to integrate interactive content into your content strategy to get a jump on your content competitors. This will allow you to take advantage of the higher performing, new content options before the results are diluted by follow-the-leader marketers.

Don’t think you know enough about the interactive content basics to try it?

I get it. I’ve been in your shoes.

But the only way to succeed at interactive content is to test and improve your results.

You don’t want to wait so long that you miss the opportunity to capture maximum results. Even better, early adopters get the added benefit of becoming a state of the art example.

Start small by repurposing a piece of existing content. For example, transform a checklist into an assessment.

You’ve already done the hard work creating the content.

Try it—you’ll learn how to create successful interactive content.

What’s your favorite example of interactive content and why do you think it succeeds?

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